SITUATION
SOLUTION
TECH STACK
IMPACT
Studies

Avios

From proof of concept to scalable storefront: the new Avios Shop

Technology & software

Full control over design and content

IAGL now has complete ownership of storefront design and functionality. Integration with their design system ensures a consistent brand experience across the Avios portfolio, while Contentful provides centralised management of content updates without reliance on third parties.

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Improved performance and reduced costs

Static page generation combined with AWS CloudFront caching delivers faster load times and a smoother customer journey across devices. The serverless architecture also reduces hosting and operational costs by scaling automatically with demand.

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Elastic scalability for future growth

The new Avios Shop was designed to scale seamlessly in line with IAGL’s ambitions. As product lines and new storefronts are added, the architecture can elastically handle increased traffic and transaction volumes without compromising performance.

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SITUATION

Overview

IAG Loyalty (IAGL), the loyalty arm of the International Airlines Group (IAG), manages global programs like Avios and works with retail and travel partners to create loyalty ecosystems where points can be collected and redeemed. A growing part of this offering is loyalty commerce, where customer can use Avios points to purchase products via IAGL's own online stores.

One of these early ventures was The Wine Flyer, built on a white-labelled e-commerce platform using BigCommerce. While functional, the store highlighted limitations in the underlying middleware that handled point transactions, as well as in the platform's native theme engine, which restricted flexibility making it difficult to customise the storefront, optimise performance, and rapidly onboard new brands. This not only slowed down the pace of innovation but also increased reliance on third-party applications and external providers.

With ambitions to expand beyond a single product category, IAGL wanted to create a future-ready e-commerce capability, one that would allow them to launch additional storefronts under the Avios brand, onboard multiple product lines, and maintain full ownership of the customer experience.

To support this vision, Leighton was engaged to conduct an architectural review of the existing store setup and its middleware. The review recommended a transition to a headless e-commerce solution, offering greater scalability, performance, and design control. To validate this recommendation, Leighton developed a proof of concept (POC), which demonstrated the feasibility and benefits of the approach.

This POC went on to provide the foundation for the new Avios Shop storefront, designed to support multiple brands and products, starting with Apple.

Solution

Delivering a headless storefront for Avios

To overcome the limitations of the existing BigCommerce setup, IAGL needed a more flexiblem scalable, and future-ready approach to loyalty commerce. Leighton designed and delivered a headless e-commerce solution that decoupled the front and back ends of the platform. This removed the restrictions of the native theme engine and enabled IAGL to create highly customisable and engaging user interfaces using modern front-end frameworks, enabling IAGL to take full ownership of its storefronts.

By adopting this approach, IAGL could deliver a dynamic, personalised, and responsive shopping experience across devices, improving customer satisfaction and conversion rates. The headless architecture also introduced centralised content management through Contentful, ensuring greater efficiency for marketing and content teams while providing lightning-fast page loads for customers.

Proof of concept to full build

To validate the approach, Leighton first developed a proof of concept (POC). This demonstrated the feasibility of transitioning to a headless architecture, proved integration with the existing middleware to support the complex exchange of Avios points, and showed that the solution could scale to manage multiple brands as IAGL expanded its product portfolio.

The success of the POC gave stakeholders confidnece that the solution was both feasible and future-proof. Building on this success, Leighton progressed to a full implementation, creating the Avios Shop, a new online store that allows members to spend their Avios points on a variety of products, beginning with Apple. The architecture was deliberately designed to act as a reusable blueprint for additional storefronts across the IAGL group.

Key features of the solution include:

Tech stack

To deliver a performant, scalable headless storefront, Leighton combined modern front-end frameworks with AWS-native serverless services. The following technologies were used to ensure flexibility, speed, and resilience:

AWS

Amazon CloudFront

AWS Lambda

AWS Step Functions

Amazon API Gateway

Amazon s3

BigCommerce

AWS CDK

Contentful

Next.js

IMPACT

Greater control, performance and scalability

The launch of the new headless Avios Shop has given IAGL a powerful, future-ready platform for loyalty commerce. Built on AWS serverless architecture, the storefront combines scalability and cost efficiency with full control over design, content, and functionality.

The result is a faster, more reliable customer experience that can grow in line with IAGL’s ambitions. With centralised content management and the flexibility to add new brands or storefronts, IAGL now has the foundations to innovate, personalise, and scale its loyalty ecosystem with confidence.

Full control over design and content
IAGL now has complete ownership of storefront design and functionality. Integration with their design system ensures a consistent brand experience across the Avios portfolio, while Contentful provides centralised management of content updates without reliance on third parties.
‍
Improved performance and reduced costs
Static page generation combined with AWS CloudFront caching delivers faster load times and a smoother customer journey across devices. The serverless architecture also reduces hosting and operational costs by scaling automatically with demand.
‍
Elastic scalability for future growth
The new Avios Shop was designed to scale seamlessly in line with IAGL’s ambitions. As product lines and new storefronts are added, the architecture can elastically handle increased traffic and transaction volumes without compromising performance.
‍
Enhanced customer experience
Customers benefit from a seamless journey when earning and redeeming points, with faster site performance and responsive design across devices. The new storefront provides the flexibility to introduce personalisation and tailored experiences in future phases.
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Technology & software

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